Italian elections

Sunday, March 4th, the general elections left many surprises in Italy. The real winner of this electoral race was the 5 Stars Movement which, despite presenting itself alone and without being part of any coalition, has collected more than 32% of votes, both in the House and in the Senate. A more than remarkable result: simply fantastic. A result due to the commitment of men and women who threw themselves into the electoral campaign with great enthusiasm and without sparing themselves. Their honest behavior and loyalty shown to their voters in the past legislature earned them the trust of an abundant third of the Italian political body.

Of course, there were other surprises: for example, there are people who still vote for Silvio Berlusconi and his "Forza Italia". But at age 82, old Silvio lost his magic. Too much tar on his head, too much glue in his face, too many stitches around his lips that make it difficult to understand when he speaks. Only a miserable 14% for the owner of half of the Italian television and with a soft spot for young girls for a fee. The times have gone by when he came down to collect votes at hand, enchanting the Italian chickens but also the pullets. Berlusconi's road is downhill, in the sense that it goes in ruin. Even the Femen activist who challenged him at the poll, showing her tits in the wind, was not the best ... poor Silvio! It's been really a while since he had his groupies for a fee in Via Dell'Olgettina in Milan!

The Northern League of Matteo Salvini has seen a sparkling result reaching about 18%, more than Forza Italia in whose coalition is. The relations of force are now clear and this is another reason why Berlusconi will not be able to dictate the law at his will. I was skeptical about the results of the League, by the scandals that had shaken it in the past and the political management of its founder Umberto Bossi and attached entourage. Apparently, Salvini played his cards well and the result was seen. It's a sin.

The "Brothers of Italy" stamp-party by Giorgia Meloni is confirmed for what, in fact, it is: a 4% stamp-party, just above the 3% barrier threshold. It will not contribute too much to the center-right coalition. It will try to do as a needle in the balance but you have to see in which scale.

The coalition of Forza Italia, League and Brothers of Italy comes to 37% but it is not enough to form a government. If the League disengaged from the others and formed a Grosse Koalition with the 5 Stars Movement, a government of national unity as some say here, then there would be numbers for a new executive but the matter at the moment seems not to be on the table: there is still too much post-results euphoria.

The Italian left is KO: the succession of Prime Ministers imposed by Brussels and that no Italian has ever voted in Parliament, the wrong economic choices, the unconditional support for the European migration policies and the sympathy for George Soros among many members of this left fashionable, all this has constituted a poisonous mixture. The Democratic Party (now only heir in words of the past Italian Communist Party) fell to 19%. Rumor has it that his general secretary, Matteo Renzi  (the man with the ice cream in his hand:

https://www.dissapore.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Matteo-Renzi-e-il-gelato-di-Grom.jpg )

resigned but it is not sure. Even this he cannot do well.

The "Free and Equal" stamp-party in the left coalition has passed the 3% barrier and is in the new Parliament. It was founded by the former president of the Senate and former magistrate Piero Grasso a couple of months before the election but apparently some Italians believed it. The sufficient number. Italians' stuff.

Instead, the "More Europa!" threat-party by former radical militant Emma Bonino, a great friend of George Soros and from whom she has always received substantial funding, disappears. At seventy years of age and with a cancer, it is time for old Emma to retire because no one wants to vote for her. But also, as often seen in Italy, nothing strange that Mrs. Bonino continues to hover like an evil presence, demanding more economic rigor, more immigration, less national sovereignty, more GMO foods, more you say dynamism but you read precariousness of work. All things that the Italians are actually tired of, but not Emma Bonino, which is indeed European and not Italian. She is not wrong but the others that do not get to the end of the month: it is all fault of the economic crisis.

Who are the real losers of these elections? Marcello Foa tells us, impeccable as his habit: the great mainstream media. All the major Italian media have snubbed Matteo Salvini's effort during the electoral campaign, preferring to believe that no Italian would have voted for him but only some savage barbarians in the North. They also preferred to rant about populism rather than understand the real reasons for the detachment but also the disgust and the suffering of Italian voters with regard to the political choices made in the past legislature. In the last weeks of the election campaign, the bogeyman of a non-existent fascist danger was inflated to art. On the contrary, the New Force and House Pound, the right-wing parties inspired by Mussolini's ideology, did reach together not even 2% of votes: a laughable quantity that does not constitute any danger but represents only a negligible nucleus of nostalgic without a future.

The great Italian media have attacked the 5 Stars Movement without restraint, accusing it of incapacity, of ingenuity, of unpreparedness. Accusations absurd in light of the fact, painfully clear to many Italians, that the situation of general crisis in which Italy is mired now is due precisely to those who instead said they were experts. A strength of the 5 Stars is keeping the promises made. One of these promises was to give up part of the salary of elected in Parliament by putting it into a mutual fund to finance small businessmen in difficulty. Ten of them thought of being clever, simulating a renunciation that in reality has not been. A scandal broke out and those responsible ended up pillory. The Italians believed the correctness of the other 5 Stars members and showed it in the voting booth. No law has been violated, just a loyalty agreement with their own voters.

The parties of the old politics have all failed and it would be now the time for a new and courageous choice: will it be possible? Difficult. The electoral law with which we went to vote was tailored to contain the success of the 5 Stars Movement and make Italy ungovernable in the event of its resounding success. Of course, no one had foreseen the success of the Northern League and the measure of the defeat of the Democratic Party. An enlarged right-left coalition could be born holding the 5 Stars in the opposition but it would not be easy to hold such apparently different people together and the manger is not as full as it used to be in the past. It would be shameful but Italy is unfortunately used to it. The next few days will tell us how will be the government in the new Parliament.

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Costantino Ceoldo - Pravda freelance

Photo By G.dallorto - Self-published work by G.dallorto, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3920605